Photo: Getty Images
There have been many UFO sightings recently, and while plenty of those crafts might be unidentified at the time, there is typically a perfectly reasonable explanation for them - they could just be drones or sky lanterns or some other Earthly thing. The same is true for things that might seem like something extraterrestrial to witnesses, which is exactly what happened recently in Turkey.
Residents and visitors to the country's Zigana Pass in the Pontic Mountains were treated to a very rare, but also eerie, phenomenon that many thought was some kind of alien tractor beam, bringing up people and wildlife to an awaiting spacecraft.
What those in the area, which is popular for skiing, watched was a bright golden beam of light shining on a single point in the mountains, stayed focused on that spot for three hours.
Abdullah Eroglu, a spokesperson for the area, told the Daily Star that he's seen many different kinds of beautiful vistas before, but never this. He stated, "We always recommend that our visitors watch the unique views of Zigana. They were lucky to see the most stunning scene today. That beam of light hit the slopes of Zigana for a really long time. We also filmed the scene with our mobile phones. It was like something from a sci-fi movie. Some people also compared it to a vertical rainbow. The guests at our center were very surprised they saw the scene and immediately reached for their phones to immortalize the moment."
As for what the beam was, according to scientists, it was a form of a crepuscular ray, a beam of sunlight that is made more visible by particles in the air, like dust, as they pass through gaps in the clouds. Usually they only occur during sunrise or sunset, so it is very rare for them to last as long as the one in Turkey did.